CN Line, Detroit, MI

©tom stoye

For all practical purposes, I finished my The Graffiti Writers project in 2012 when the Detroit Institute of Arts purchased a portfolio of my prints for their permanent collection. The sale marked the culmination of nearly a decade of documenting graffiti culture in southwest Detroit.

Before I went to the museum to present my prints, a friend helped me edit through stacks of images, before we settled on my final selection of 25 black&white prints that were assembled into a handmade linen portfolio case. The problem was, I had so many photographs that never made there way into that portfolio case, so even though I walked away feeling relieved and proud, I also felt like I had some unfinished business regarding other images that've been mostly hid from the public eye.

I'm finally getting around to making more of the unprinted images, but in the meantime, I've continued to photograph writers that I had passed up for the last ten years.  There's many significant writers besides the small group I chose to originally document, so I feel a sense of duty to document those that I had not included during my original efforts.  To separate the old and the new, from 2011 onward I switched from black&white to color.  I'm not sure if these images will ever amount to anything, insofar as them making there way into a completed body of work, but time is funny that way, because what often feels trivial and unfocused, can become relevant with the passage of time.  So slowly but surely, I'm photographing more writers who didn't get photographed while I was involved with my earlier work.

I've never been good at putting a project to rest, but I've become enamored with street art, and it's hard to imagine that I could end it and be done with it for good. So on I go... one foot in, and one foot out the door.